


Millie's Fate

by allyndra



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyndra/pseuds/allyndra
Summary: Millie struggles with control.





	Millie's Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenewradical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewradical/gifts).



Perhaps, Millie thought -- and it made her feel terribly mature and worldly-wise just to think it -- perhaps nothing ever quite lived up to one's expectations. She sighed, huddling a bit deeper into her blankets and wishing for the warm bulk of one of her cats to tuck her feet against. But Proudfroot was back at Chrestomanci Castle, under the watchful eye and protective claw of Throgmorten. And Millie was here. Alone.

A cluster of giggles from the other end of the dormitory reminded her that she wasn't _really_ alone, and that was the worst part. She'd wanted friends so badly, been so sure that school would be jolly and full of bosom companions, and instead … she heard someone say, “Like silly Millie,” in the next round of giggling.

Millie blinked back tears and told herself that it was just like in _Millie’s Finest Hour_ when Delphinia was such a horrible prig to the Millie in the story. And look how that turned out! Story Millie had become Head Girl and had celebrated with her mates, while Delphinia had glowered jealously in defeat. But no matter how firmly she told herself that it was just the same, it didn't _feel_ the same at all. Though she'd cried buckets over what Christopher called “the slushy parts" of the books, it had been fun. Sobbing from fellow feeling for Story Millie had always been cleansing and somehow entertaining. But lying in her too cold, too hard, too narrow bed and feeling tears drip into her ears as other girls snickered about her oddities wasn't fun at all.

And she _was_ odd; even she knew it. She was cold all the time in the chilly, damp climate, so she habitually wore sweaters and shawls atop her school uniform. She was constantly reaching for a bracelet to fiddle with, only to realize that she wasn't wearing any, which gave her a strange, fluttery sort of fidget. She found the food impossibly bland unless she added vast amounts of spice, so she'd asked Christopher to send her a packet of pepper, ginger, and horseradish. She tried to sneak bits of spice out of her pockets and onto her plate unnoticed at mealtimes, but one only had to be caught with a pocket full of horseradish once to gain a reputation. 

All of this would have been quite enough to invite mockery even without Millie’s surprising ignorance of geography, history, science, religion … well, pretty much everything. So little of her old life was applicable here, and the handful of storybooks she’d read so ravenously hadn’t been enough to supply the lack. The one thing she truly excelled at was magic, but even there she was at the disadvantage of having never learnt the theory and grounding that the school's witchcraft classes focused on. She'd spent most of her life believing that her magic was part of her goddess attributes.

Cold, lonely, crushed under her own ignorance and hurt feelings, Millie wondered if she ought to have let Mother Proudfoot devise a future for her, after all. But then she remembered the panicked terror that had roiled in her gut when she’d seen Asheth’s portent, the sickening thrum of fear and betrayal that had driven her across worlds. No. It was better, _safer_ to make her own plans, even if they didn't meet her expectations. 

She would just have to work harder to fit in.

…………

When she had been a goddess, Millie had developed a true gift for scheming. She’d patiently watched the priestesses, novices, and servants, learning their patterns and habits. Combined with a talent for sneaking, planning, and lying, along with an exceptionally effective Very Stupid Face, Millie used that knowledge to wangle little bits of control and pockets of privacy for herself – time to be the girl she was underneath or alongside being the Living Asheth. 

Now Millie deployed those skills again, bending them toward a new goal. She'd come to Brentwood Academy intending to be a prefect, a Head Girl, bosom bow to dozens. Now she just wanted to be ordinary, and she had a plan on how to accomplish it.

She started with research. Millie had been on the outskirts since the start of term, and she used that status to spy shamelessly on the other girls. She listened to their conversations and noted their habits, mimicking them quietly when she was in the bathroom (the only place she had true privacy). She watched not the popular girls who were stars of their dorms, but the normal girls who got middling marks and had middling lives.

Slowly, she began to put her findings to work. She practiced making calm, boring expressions in the mirror until they came naturally. She took up sewing so that she would have something to do with her hands during free time, so that she wouldn't reach for her missing bracelets. She stopped sneaking spices into her food and found her taste buds slowly adapting. 

She also began to sneakily charm her clothes and blankets to be extra warm. Students were forbidden from doing magic outside of witchcraft classes, but this was a quiet, subtle magic and Millie was an enchantress. No one noticed, and Millie was vastly more comfortable.

It took time for Silly Millie to fade away, and some of the nastier girls would probably never let go of it. But before winter term ended, most of the pupils at Brentwood House found Millie to be downright boring.

It was amazing. 

Bit by bit, she also found herself less alone. Hepzibah in her Literature class saw her reading a novel about a girl who trained horses and started a conversation about her cousin’s pony. Anne from her dorm tore the pocket on her uniform and Millie volunteered to mend it. The next day Anne saved her an extra biscuit at tea. Florrie in her witchcraft class struggled mightily with performing magic, but knew absolutely everything about magic theory. She proposed a swap, in which she tutored Millie in theory while Millie helped her with the practical lessons.

Having friends was every bit as thrilling as books had made it seem! Of course, she'd had Christopher all along, but he was so far away. Passing notes during lessons, sitting together at meals, trading books and magazines … Millie treasured every new experience she shared with her friends. And she discovered that beneath their unremarkable surfaces, Florrie, Anne, and Hepzibah hid nearly as many oddities as herself. Anne was wildly fascinated by a handful of stage stars, and read about them to the point of obsession. She could recite facts about them from their birthdates to favorite foods to all of the plays they'd ever acted in. Hepzibah was so terrified of heights that she clutched tight at the railings when she had to go up stairs. And Florrie -- ordinary Florrie who looked like she'd never done anything more interesting than make oatmeal -- was secretly the best acrobat Millie had ever seen. Some evenings, the four of them would creep away to disused corridors so that Florrie could tie up her skirts and do tumbling passes up and down the hallways. 

Knowing one another's private quirks drew them closer together, and Millie lost her fear of letting them see beneath her ordinariness. They began to sneak her cinnamon and pepper just as she saved clippings from theatre magazines for Anne and walked on the outside of Hepzibah on stairs and balconies.

She wrote letter after letter to Christopher about all of it. He wrote back suggestions for blending in (although some of these tended to be too cricket-heavy to be of much use to her). And though sometimes she could practically feel his envy of her situation and her new friends rising off the page, she could also feel his goodwill. “I think,” he wrote, “that most people have a protective face that they wear on the outside. Now that I know how to lie, I'm working on creating mine. You’ll have to help me with it when you're home from school.”

By summer hols, Millie was just one more schoolgirl among many. She felt a smug satisfaction in her success, like a warmth in her chest. She was in control of her own fate.

………….

………….

After the investigators and Sorceress Royal and gawking neighbors had dispersed, Gabriel de Witt took Millie, Christopher, and Conrad back to the Stallery Arms, where he had taken a room. The three young people sat awkwardly at the small table in one corner of the room, while Gabriel de Witt stood silently before them, his hands clasped behind his back and his eyebrows low over his eyes. He looked taller and more dour than ever.

“This must never happen again,” he said finally. “I concede that the school was untenable, Millie, but to run away, to flee to a different Series, to lead Christopher into danger –“

“She didn't lead me anywhere,” Christopher said hotly. 

Gabriel de Witt waved his hand. “You made an impulsive and badly reasoned decision to chase after Millie’s impulsive and badly reasoned flight,” he said sharply. “And it must never happen again. Christopher, you are far too important to the Related Worlds to take such chances. And Millie, you left us vulnerable to the wrath of Asheth by putting yourself at risk. It is unacceptable.”

Millie swallowed hard against her frustration. “I won't promise to stay trapped in a horrible place,” she said, keeping both her face and voice carefully calm. 

Gabriel de Witt pursed his lips. “My dear, you were never trapped anywhere.”

Gabriel de Witt was one of the most learned men Millie had ever encountered, but she couldn't help thinking that he had no idea what he was talking about. She had tried speaking to her teachers and the headmistress, she had appealed to Gabriel de Witt himself, she'd written to Miss Rosalie … no one had listened and all doors had seemed closed to her. The only one who had listened at all had been Christopher, with his patronizing offer to take care of it for her. By Millie’s reckoning, having no choices and no voice was the very definition of ‘trapped.’ And being trapped brought her straight to desperation and the need to escape. 

Still, Millie knew when she wasn't going to win an argument with a grown up. “This won't happen again,” she promised. And she meant it; next time she would plan her escape more carefully. And take Christopher's loyalty into account.

Gabriel de Witt gave her a long, measuring look. “Very well. We'll speak more when we're home and rested,” he said with one more significant and judgmental look at Christopher. “We'll remain in Series Seven for a few more days while the investigation is resolved, and I expect all three of you to be on your best behavior.”

Millie nodded silently, and our of the corners of her eyes, she saw Conrad and Christopher doing the same. Gabriel de Witt left them alone to meet with the rest of the investigators. As the door shut behind him, Millie drooped forward to press her head to the table. 

“So,” Christopher said, “that was delightful. It's been so long since I've been dressed down for something other than serving tea incorrectly.”

Millie took a deep breath and lifted her head to face him fiercely. “I shall not stay trapped somewhere,” she said. It seemed that she was always being caught and held, used and manipulated. It made her think of the Festival, of being a Thing rather than a person, of being displayed and touched and shouted at and utterly helpless. “I shan't.”

“Maybe you could make contingencies,” Conrad said. He still looked windblown and heartbroken by the day’s revelations, but there was a sincere, helpful look in his eye. It make her glad that she and Christopher had a friend in him. “You know, sort of plan ahead so that if things go wrong, you're not left scrambling.”

“Are you good at that sort of thing?” Millie asked him. 

“I've never tried,” he said. “I always thought my fate was inescapable. But now I quite like the idea of making plans for myself. And especially if I get to choose them, rather than just jumping when disaster strikes.” 

His face went dark again, and Christopher clapped him on the shoulder. “True enough, Grant,” he said. “Though there's not many I’d rather have on my team when disaster does strike than the two of you.” And Millie was reminded again that for all his posturing and sarcasm, she did really like Christopher. 

“How does one plan ahead for future emergencies?” she asked. “I can't know on advance what they'll be.”

Christopher rubbed his hands together, his black eyes bright. “It will be like planning strategies in sport,” he said, “or battles. They have to be flexible because you don't know what everyone else will do, but you have a framework.”

Millie rolled her eyes, thinking of cricket and of defending Chrestomanci Castle against the Wraith and the Arm of Asheth at the same time. She nodded. “We'll need some paper,” she said decisively. 

Between the three of them, they sketched out plans for contingencies, fights and escapes. Over the next few years, it became a game thru played when the three of them were alone together. When Millie started at her next school, she repeated escape plans to herself silently throughout her first week. 

She took to carrying an extra handkerchief and but of seeing in her pocket, as thread magic was so very useful, and sometimes just touching the scam of fabric settled her. When she wrote to Christopher or Conrad, she included a code phrase letting them know that she was well, and it warmed her soul when they did the same in return. She began corresponding with her first school chums, Anne, Hepzibah, and Florrie, and she felt safer knowing that there were people unconnected to Chrestomanci who knew and cared for her. 

She might not be in control of her fate, but she had plans in place to face it.

………….  
………….

The night before the wedding, Millie nearly ran.

It wasn't that she had any doubts about Christopher. She loved him. She loved him in ways that poems and storybooks rhapsodized about, and in ways that she'd never read. She had trusted him at a time when she hadn't trusted anything else, not her home and not her Asheth, and he'd shown himself worthy of that trust again and again. 

It was herself that she had doubts about.

Sometimes, deep in her heart, Millie still thought that Story Millie was the Real Millie. She didn't know what that made her. False Millie. Former Goddess. She was no one, really. Perhaps that ought to have been a dreadful thought, but instead it was usually freeing. She could be anyone.

But tomorrow she wouldn't be anyone. She would be Millie Chant, Christopher's wife, partner of the future Chrestomanci and holder of his life. His _life!_ It was terrifying.

Millie was sitting on her bed, pulling a handkerchief through her hands over and over and reciting contingency plans when her door opened and Christopher slipped in. His clothes and hair were impeccable, but there was a hunted look in his eyes that made her think he'd been hiding from someone.

“I keep telling Henrietta that it's not bad luck to see you today, as the wedding is tomorrow, but she won't leave me be,” he said. “Anyway, I've come to see if you want to give all of this a miss and go live on an island on Series Five after all.”

Millie giggled, high and sharp and just a bit desperate. “We can't,” she said. “The guests have already arrived. Your parents have come in from Japan. Mother Proudfoot and Mother Dowson are here. We can’t just leave.” Her heart was speeding up. 

Christopher gazed at her, one of those sincere, penetrating looks that nearly no one else got to see from him. “We can do anything,” he said. 

Millie’s heart thumped hard and stopped racing. Deep inside her, something clicked into place and settled. They _could_ do anything. Between the two of them, they had nearly absurd amounts of power, years of escape plans, and vast resources of sneakiness. But they didn’t _have_ to do anything. They could choose. She could choose. 

Millie smiled. “Christopher,” she said, “will you marry me?” She could suddenly see their path stretching out before them. They would support one another as they had always done. Christopher would be the bright, shining star that drew the eye while Millie worked quietly, ordinary and unnoticed – just as she liked. 

“You know, I think I will,” he said. The hunted look was gone.

The two of them spent the rest of the evening hiding from well meaning friends and relatives. And the next day, with a cat at her feet and a scrap of sewing tucked into her bodice (just in case), Millie made promises to Christopher that didn’t make her feel trapped at all. 

Maybe no one was ever in control of their fate. For the first time, Millie felt safe letting hers come anyway.


End file.
